Kazakhstan extends Saiga antelope hunting ban until 2021

Yahoo News 18 Jan 11;

ASTANA (AFP) – Kazakhstan on Tuesday extended a ban on hunting saiga antelopes until 2021 as the Central Asian nation seeks to save the endangered species.

An order by the country's agriculture ministry to extend the ban was issued in November 2010 and published in local media on Tuesday, effective immediately.

The previous ban lasted until late last year.

Saiga antelopes, which have distinctive bulbous noses, are listed as a critically endangered species by WWF.

The Kazakh agriculture ministry put the country's saiga population at over 90,000 antelopes as of late 2010, although the WWF estimates the antelope's entire number at 50,000, having shrunk from over a million in the 1990s.

Its population fell drastically following the collapse of the Soviet Union, due to uncontrolled hunting and demand for its horns in Chinese medicine.

The introduction of the new ban follows an outbreak of pasteurellosis, an infectious disease that strikes the lungs and intestines, that claimed nearly 12,000 saiga antelopes in Kazakhstan last year.

The antelopes migrate between Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Mongolia, Turkmenistan and China.